[via Daring Fireball] Apple can hardly avoid controversy these days, and now a brouhaha has developed over a section of their site promoting HTML5 and how the Safari browser is using it.

This is a continuum of the fight Apple has been having with Adobe over rejection of Flash on the iPhone/iPad platform. By emphasizing HTML5 and web standards, Apple is combating the notion presented by Adobe and the legions of Mac-haters out there, who assert that Steve Jobs’ movement away from the very proprietary Flash plugin is actually a movement toward making Apple more proprietary. Uh, yea. Right.

Here’s the rub. The HTML5 section of Apple’s website includes some cool demos, which you can’t view unless you’re using the Safari browser – the site uses a sniffer to warn you off if using a different browser. Critics have cried foul, claiming these demos would have unwitting users believe that only Safari supports HTML5, and furthermore, that Apple may even be taking credit for HTML5, which is an open standard already partly implemented in all the better browsers*

*By all the better browsers, of course, we mean most browsers that aren’t named Microsoft Internet Explorer. Read More…

An article in UK’s Financial Times claims that Rupert Murdoch and Microsoft are in talks to wall off News Corp content from Google search, granting index of the relevant news sites to Microsoft’s Bing search engine.  Microsoft would presumably pay News Corp to index content, a practice never tried at this level before -  and, it should be noted, an utterly vapid one.

Murdoch’s activities in the old-school business world are watched closely – executive bean-counters jump at his heels like puppies.  But his track record in the online world is weak.  He bought MySpace, and just a few years later, the once-dominant social network has been crushed by Facebook and is increasingly looked upon with scorn when it’s looked upon at all.  More recently, Murdoch has been promoting the notion that general news content should be restricted to paid-only online subscribers – oh, and that Google is evil and “stealing” his newspaper content.   … All folly, of course.

For Microsoft, this idea would certainly be about undercutting Google’s command of the search business. While Microsoft’s Bing has received decent reviews and has surely shown an increase in market share, early indications are that Bing won’t heavily erode Google’s advantage.  For Microsoft to be taking these talks seriously, there would have to be someone in Redmond (and maybe his name rhymes with Steve Ballmer) who thinks they can draw a large segment of “big media” content exclusively into the Bing realm, relegating the rest of the Web’s unwashed content to purgatory.

It’s quaint that they might be thinking this way. Quainter still might be media companies looking on with wonder.  From the FT article:

But the biggest beneficiary of the tussle could be the newspaper industry, which has yet to construct a reliable online business model that adequately replaces declining print and advertising revenues.

And this:

One website publisher approached by Microsoft said that the plan “puts enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to index with them”.

So, the new model involves reputable news organizations bestowing quality links unto Microsoft alone (to start), and then cashing their checks.

The desperation is thick. And now, unclean as well.